What this is about: Watching all of the anime shows so you don’t have to! For more information about me and my reviews, click here for details on what I am reviewing.

Series Premise: No. 6 is a weekly anime television series started in July 2011, based on a long-running light novel series of the same name. Set in the futuristic utopian City Number 6, Shion has a bright future ahead of him — until one night he has a chance encounter with another boy, Nezumi, a petty criminal on run from the authorities. Four years pass before they meet again, and now it is Nezumi’s turn to help Shion learn about the true nature of the world around him.

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Very Quick Episode Summary: Safu returns to No. 6 after her grandmother’s death, and now looking at everything with a new perspective, quickly determines everything is not as it seems *coughcough*Logan’sRun*coughcough*. After visiting Shion’s mother, Safu is detained and taken away. Shion and Nezumi remain at odds, and when he learns of Safu’s disappearance, he decides to keep it a secret.

My Impressions: Har, still kind of amused by the inappropriately corny background music, as if ripped out of a cheapo seventies sci-fi show.

After being sidelined relatively early in the series (after all, not much room for a guuurrrlll in a shonen-ai show, neh?), Safu is back. Which is a refreshing change, and I think Random Curiosity nails it exactly as to the reason:

“I don’t think it’s so much that I like her character any better than the others, but that she makes a nice change of pace from the over-the-top theatricality of Shion and Nezumi, and indeed the entire cast and setting of the West District. Shion and Nezumi speak like characters in a play – fittingly enough given Nezumi’s vocation. But it does get a little exhausting after a while. Safu, by contrast, is refreshingly direct and concise. She says what she thinks and gets it over with. Of course, that makes me wonder how she lasted in No. 6 as long as she did.” Well said.

I have always liked the “direct and concise” Safu; she has that slightly-autistic personality that actually closely matches my own slightly-autistic side. It really does stand out in stark contrast to the overwrought antics of Shion and Nezumi, who always seem so forceful in their interactions. I could see Safu as a real person, but Shion and Nezumi are nothing more than actors playing the parts. Or so it seems.

Meanwhile, Nezumi is still dangling the “threat” of revealing exactly why he hates No. 6 to Shion, which is this juicy tidbit he’s been dangling in front of Shion for four episodes now. By this point, they’ve been living under the same roof for some time, you would have figured out they would have had this conversation that is so critical to their own relationship by this point. So the two of them remain in this extremely strained, unresolved not-really-friendship of theirs, even as Shion’s feared Springtime with the supposed deadly bee outbreak is nigh.

“On the Shion and Nezumi side of things, I’m finding the pure “black and white” portrayal of their relationship kind of forced. I mean, while Shion is a naive, idealistic boy, by the same token Nezumi is a overtly stoic, one-track-mind guy. He seems to believe the notion that “you’re with us, or against us”, and doesn’t acknowledge gray areas and ambiguous positions. That in itself is a critical flaw, and will probably come back to hurt Nezumi later on. As for Shion, at least there are signs that he’s finally going to do something. Though whether it’ll be soon enough to help out Safu, I guess we can’t say.” – Emory Anime Club

“I think I may have finally been able to put my finger on what bothers me so much about this show: it’s the dialogue. It’s just too well thought out and over-dramatized. It doesn’t sound like the characters are having a conversation. It sounds like they’re reading out the lines from a play that they memorized. This has the effect of making the characters’ interaction feel superficial and downright corny.” – Draggle’s Anime Blog

“I don’t see the harm in telling Shion his past though, given the fact that he’s as attached as he will EVER BE to Nezumi. Is it really such a sensitive topic for him? Perhaps he was raised in No.6, and things aren’t as black and white as he likes to make Shion believe. Maybe he just made things black and white in order to make a set decision and have nothing holding him back, such as regrets. MAYBE I’M SPECULATING TOO MUCH, BUT I WANT TO KNOW.” – Metanorn